Candidates are in statistical dead heat
JARED MILLER Star-Tribune capital bureau | Posted: Sunday, January 27, 2008 12:00 am
CHEYENNE - The general election race for Wyoming's lone U.S. House seat could be another nail-biter, a new Casper Star-Tribune poll shows.
Democrat Gary Trauner, the Teton County businessman who narrowly lost to Rep. Barbara Cubin in 2006, is in a statistical tie with former state treasurer Cynthia Lummis, a Republican, the results show.
The poll by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research of Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18-21, surveyed 625 registered voters from across the state who said they regularly vote in Wyoming state elections. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
If the election were held now, Trauner would receive 41 percent of the vote, while Lummis would get 40 percent, the poll showed. The remaining 19 percent of voters said they were undecided.
Both candidates registered strong name recognition among potential voters.
Trauner, 47, had 80 percent voter name recognition. That's even better than 76 percent name recognition he had in a Star-Tribune poll conducted less than a month before the 2006 general election.
Lummis, who was recognized by 70 percent of the voters in the recent poll, is by far the best known Republican candidate.
Lummis, 53, of Cheyenne, stepped down as state treasurer in 2006, and was reintroduced to the public last year as a finalist for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. John Barrasso.
In terms of name recognition, her closest GOP rival, according to the poll, is longtime Republican activist and former U.S. Justice Department official Tom Sansonetti of Cheyenne, who was recognized by 56 percent of voters.
Sansonetti, who was also a finalist for the open U.S. Senate seat last year, has not announced whether he'll run for office.
Other Republicans who have announced their candidacies but registered less than 50 percent voter name recognition were state Rep. Dan Zwonitzer of Cheyenne, retired Navy officer Bill Winney of Sublette County, and Swede Nelson of Cheyenne.
If the Republican primary were held today, 31 percent of GOP voters said they would select Lummis.
Other GOP candidates and potential candidates registered in the single digits: Sansonetti, 9 percent, Zwonitzer, 5 percent, state House Speaker Roy Cohee, 4 percent, former U.S. Attorney for Wyoming Matt Mead, 3 percent, Nelson, 2 percent, and Winney, 1 percent.
The remaining 45 percent said they hadn't made a decision.
Democrats favored Trauner over Lummis by a rate of 8-1.
Democrat Sally Bloom of Evansville was one of the supporters.
"He just seemed like he was really for the people and wanted to know what our needs and wants were and was going to work for us," said Bloom, adding that she voted for Trauner in 2006.
Lummis didn't receive the same support from her own party.
Twenty-three percent of Republicans said they would cross party lines to vote for Trauner. Another 23 percent of Republicans were undecided.
Trauner, meanwhile, had more detractors than Lummis. A full 25 percent of voters said they have an unfavorable impression of Trauner. By comparison, only 17 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable impression of Lummis.
Independent voters were nearly split between the candidates, with 37 percent supporting Trauner, 33 percent supporting Lummis and 30 percent undecided.
Women who participated in the poll were more likely to voter for Trauner, while men were more likely to vote for Lummis.
'This could get exciting'
Jim King, political science professor at the University of Wyoming, said he was somewhat surprised to see the number of Republicans who said they'd vote for Trauner.
King said that could be a result of residual unhappiness with Cubin, whose unfavorable rating is more than 50 percent.
Or it could be that some Republicans, impressed with Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, are starting to think that "Democrats aren't as bad as they thought they were."
King said this election could be a tougher challenge for Trauner than 2006 because he won't be running against an unpopular incumbent.
It will be still tougher if the Republican candidate can prevent party cross-over votes, he said.
The key at this point, King said, is the undecided voters.
Dave Marcum, political science instructor at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, said Trauner and Lummis should be "tickled pink" about the poll numbers.
If the national Democratic and Republican parties inject campaign funds for the race - the Democrats have already indicated they will - "this could get exciting before it's all over," Marcum said.
Campaigns under way
Trauner, who was sipping a malt at Yellowstone Drug in Shoshoni when he learned about the poll via telephone, said the numbers show that voters were impressed with his message in 2006.
"We worked very hard to show them that someone wants to represent them as opposed to special interests," he said. "I'm hopeful that the reason that my name recognition is so high is because people remember that we did it that way."
Some campaign watchers in 2006 speculated that he might have fared better if he'd been more aggressive or run negative ads against Cubin. Despite that, Trauner said he intends to keep his campaign positive in 2008 - but he said he does intend to hold his opponents accountable.
"If I don't think it's something my kids would be proud of, I'm not going to do it," Trauner said. "That's the reason I'm running: to change the way we do our politics, the way we represent the people who elect us."
Lummis said she was "humbled and pleased" by the poll numbers.
Lummis, a lawyer and rancher, said she is in the midst of building county campaign organizations, recruiting a board of directors for her election committee, creating campaign materials and developing a Web site with help from her daughter, Annaliese Wiederspahn, a former Wall Street stock broker who moved back to Wyoming to help with the campaign.
"I intend between now and August to work very hard to earn the support of both those who have indicated thus far that they favor me as well as those who either have not heard of me or lean toward another candidate," Lummis said.
Reach capital bureau reporter Jared Miller at (307) 632-1244 or at {M3jared.miller@trib.com.